Hey there, folks! I’m about to do my first Linux install and I’m trying to figure out which DE I wanna use. I’m not concerned about how analogous the DE is to any other OS because I’m willing to learn and develop a new workflow. From a performance and overall compatibility perspective, does either GNOME or KDE outshine over the other for this? This is specifically considering the latest non-beta/stable versions of each. Does the Anaconda installer work in the KDE spin of Fedora, or is the install process different altogether? I know Fedora’s default is GNOME, does this make for any less stability with KDE?
Edit: I appreciate all of your comments, thank you for taking the time to write them! Initially I was really interested in GNOME for its minimalist design, but it seems KDE can be altered for a similar form without needing to rely much on third party pieces because of how much is already built into it. Although I’m certain the GNOME DE is a really nice one, I think I’m gonna give it a go with KDE simply because it has three customizability already out-of-the-box and it seems to be slightly lighter weight. Of course, there’s no reason to ever settle and it’s likely I’ll try GNOME at some point instead. Thank you! :)
I used to prefer GNOME, until I started using KDE daily on the desktop, I thought it would just be temporary, but I ended up liking KDE way more because of the features that are built-in, the integration is simply priceless and I’m tired of those GNOME extensions that keep breaking at the next GNOME major release and I have to wait weeks for the poor devs to catch up and fix them up to get the compatibility going again, in some ways that also happens on KDE with the widgets, but, arguably, you will need way fewer of those to extend the already wide functionality provided by the Fedora KDE experience, so you risk incurring in that issue a lot less. Note I specifically mention Fedora both because it’s the system you want and because the pool of apps included is the best for a streamlined, but not bloated, experience, which also allows me to use Kinoite without troubling myself to overlay crucial apps that aren’t provided (or don’t work fully) as Flatpak.
Widgets and themes broke when version 6 was released but that was a major upgrade which changed the underlying technology (Qt5 to Qt6) and it was announced before-hand. It tends not happen with minor and patch updates.